Finally, I thought the following item about Albert Ayler’s most famous composition should be included here.

The Origin of ‘Ghosts’

From Dan Warburton’s sleevenotes to The Copenhagen Tapes:

“Ayler Records’ Jan Strom claims that ‘Ghosts’ originates in a song called Torparvisan (‘Little Farmer’s Song’) which was a hit on Swedish radio in 1961, and the late Bengt Frippe Nordstrom, who recorded Albert at the time, confirmed that Albert performed the song while touring the country with local musicians. A close listening to the 78 rpm recording as sung by Gunde Johansson reveals little melodic similarity between the folk material and any extant Ayler composition to my knowledge, though the harmonic correspondences are clear enough. Then again, it could be argued that, in Scandinavian folk music, Ayler rediscovered the universal tonic-subdominant-dominant cornerstones of Western music, the basic building blocks of the gospel and blues tradition he grew up with.”